It means it’s time for great swathes of flowery sentimental guff about what is, at the end of the day, a load of grass surrounded by plastic seats, overlooked by blocks of flats.

The only way we can get through the misty-eyed paeans to Lord’s these days is to turn it into a game. If you’re actively looking for eye-watering sentiment, it isn’t quite so eye-rollingly infuriating when it happens.

As ever, we’ve got particularly high hopes for Mark Nicholas so we’re recording Channel 5’s highlights show specifically to hear his monologue.

This year we’re hoping for a ‘hallowed turf’. We’ll be punching the air if we get one.

28 Appeals

I’m excited to see whether either Sri Lanka (through sheer incompetence) or England (through Jimmy most likely) can manage to make what is in effect a grassy stretch of road yield anything approaching a result. My hopes aren’t high, if I’m honest.

Other than that, it’s hoping for a return to form for Middlesex’s own underperforming duo. If it’s a two-innings draw but Compo scores 150 and Finn gets all eight Sri Lankan wickets to fall, I’ll have got something out of it.

Daneel, a stat I saw on cricinfo earlier when Cook made his 13th test score of 50 or more at HQ made me think of you – because in naming the man he surpassed, they said ‘Ian Bell had 12.’
Had.
Not ‘has’.
Past tense. Over. Never-to-be-added-to.
Sorry you had to learn this way…

It’s the Home of Cricket after all! Every player growing up dreamt of playing here and getting on that famous honours board. Or as a batsman walking through that famous long room where all the greats of the game have trod before etc etc. It truly is a special place to play cricket.

The Great MP Vaughan puts it better than I ever could:
“It is an amazing venue. There is something about this place, regardless of the opposition or the state of the series. Whether it is a county match or a university match as soon as you arrive through the Grace Gates you know you are here for something special. I still get butterflies.”

I’ve started an online petition to get Headingly renamed “Peasant’s”. Further, all the hackneyed terms used about Lord’s should be reversed, generating Blasphemous Grass, Regional Sales Office, and Home of SuperLeague (*).

Sympathy is too strong a word, but it doesn’t give me pleasure. It is one of the most perplexing things I’ve come across in sport. I know it happened to Lancashire a few seasons ago (relegated as reigning champions), but there was never anything solid about Lancs in the first place. Leeds have been dominant for a decade. I struggle to believe that the change from winning everything to losing 14 games out of 17 is down to just the loss of a couple of players, or to the injury list. There are rumours about Zak Hardaker which possibly make more sense, and which might explain why he’s on the transfer list.

But they are in a proper mess. As it stands, they need to win four games from their remaining six just to get the current points total of the team in eighth. Two wins for Widnes, and one each for Wakefield and Castleford, and that’s that. Of course, they still have to lose to at least one Championship team to get relegated, but if that were to happen I wouldn’t be unable to spake.

Soccerball isn’t my sport, but it does ring a bit “Leicester in reverse” doesn’t it?

Except you can’t follow up being actually relegated, with winning the title of the league you’ve been relegated from.*

So perhaps the best the Rhinos can hope for is to achieve a “Reverse Leicester”, and merely be almost relegated.

* (The world has many professional sports leagues, many of which feature promotion and relegation. I wonder if there is, in fact, a league out there somewhere where a club was relegated, but the club due for promotion was disallowed for some technical or legal or financial reason, and the relegated club was given a reprieve which allowed them to win the top title the subsequent year. This seems plausible, though it would be remarkable.)

You might have expected that with only six days worth of cricketing whimsy to fill a weekly publication, it’d be stretched a little thin but these accusations have proved to be unfounded. Still, ever the optimist, I’m looking forward to the next Badger being an entire 14.3% better.

Badger was released early, surely because KC’s eyes were all dewey at the thought of the Lord’s test, so he knew he would be unable to write (let alone spake) around his usual publication slot.

Some might say that this week’s Badger was not the strongest. I can imagine KC himself saying (if indeed he could spake) “four out of ten”. For much of the content I would have to agree. Another week, another badger…

…but…

…any episode of Cricket Badger that has a Bob Willis rail travel sighting – not least a sighting on exactly the same line/journey as I saw Bob on the way home from the Oval on 27 August 1977 after he had scored 24 not out and taken a wicket against the Aussies…

58.2
Pradeep to Bairstow, 4 leg byes, big swing into the pads, and an even bigger appeal … but hang on, what’s this … the ball deflects into the gully, the shy comes in from point, and that is four leg byes through deep midwicket! You don’t see that every day

Magical stuff at the Hallowed HQ of Cricketeering! More of this kind of thing please.

Subdued or even sub-dewey paean by Mark Nicholas last evening. I think KC might have nobbled him. Lots of “home of cricket” mentions by the whole team, though. Not least Simon Hughes who learnt his craft at HQ (as we locals prefer to call it).